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Laptop won't load...HELP!

J

JeffCos

Golden Member
IBM R31 laptop, kept freezing at the windows load screen and had to be restarted everytime. I finally got it running in safe mode, but no programs or anythink would work. Someone told me to run KillDisk so i did and now when i try to reinstall Windows it gets as far as "Setup is starting Windows" and goes no further than that. Any suggestions on how i can get windows loaded on here?


Will installing a basic version of Linux first and the installing XP on top of that work?
 
You can boot from a knoppix CD without installing anything if you want, but it sounds like a hardware problem. Maybe failing HDD.
 
yeah i thought of knoppix, but i'm gonna try ubuntu first. I'm downloading it now, maybe once i burn the image it'll take to the HDD.
 
Driver errors?
Maybe there is a tiny error in RAM that Linux skips over - download and run memtest overnite to rule that out.
Can you download the disk yoot from seagate - test your hdd.
Please post back with the results either way.
 
Actually believe it or not i used DOS 6. I know, right!?! I fdisked, then formatted, then fixboot. Then it still wouldn't install XP. So i went to one of my old system recovery disks that i got with another laptop and installed winME and IT WORKED!! Still 1 problem though, it boots, but when it goes to search for drivers it continually freezes and restarts, because the drivers on that recovery disk are not what's in the computer. However, I can boot into safe mode. Now i'm stuck because this model doesn't have a floppy drive and i need it to install the drivers manually into winME. I have a USB floppy somewhere, but it'll take alittle effort to find it...can in install drivers into WinME in safe mode? I don't know. If anyone wants to throw a suggestion out there i'm willing to try it because this laptop is basically my test mule now.
 
I think DOS used FAT16 if you didn't enable large disk support (more than 2GB?? I think - long time ago now)
I also think that XP doesn't recognise FAT16. (But am not sure)
IF i am right, that might lead to problems, but I can't see why the xp disc wouldn't be able to fdisk and format in ntfs as required.

 
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